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❛ ᴏᴄᴇᴀɴ ᴇʏᴇꜱ​​​​​​​​​​. ❜ ° . ༄
- ͙۪۪˚   ▎❛ 𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐕𝐄 ❜   ▎˚ ͙۪۪̥◌
»»————- ꒰ ʀᴀɢɪɴɢ ᴄᴏʀʏ ꒱


❝ GIMME A KISS ❞

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Shawn pulled Juliet towards the couch that sat off to the side of the room. After sitting down on it, he stretched his legs out across the cushions. The redhead huffed. "Great, now where am I supposed to sit Mr. Couch-Hogger?"

The boy rolled his eyes and extended his hand, to which the girl tentatively placed hers in his as she looked at him curiously. He tugged her forward until her legs bumped against the edge of the sofa. "Sit, Julie."

"Where?"

With an exaggerated sigh, he nudged her with his free hand. "Turn around."

Once she had, he looped his arms around her waist and tugged her downward. Juliet's face flamed instantly as she landed on— "Shawn!"

His grip on her waist tightened. "You're here now, you can't move." She could feel the warmth on her face positively burning as she sat stiffly on his lap. Rolling his eyes again (though he would have denied the light pink that dusted his own face) he poked her legs. "Put those on the couch." When she hesitated, he repeated the gesture. "Stop overthinking and just do it, Julie."

More carefully than she'd ever done anything in her life, Juliet swung her legs up to match her boyfriend's position. Her back remained ramrod straight until the dark-haired boy gently grasped her shoulders and eased her to lean against him. His breath was warm in her ear as he spoke next: "just relax."

Forcing herself to do as he said and stop overthinking, Juliet gingerly shifted against him to get more comfortable as she slowly grew used to the new position. It wasn't so bad once she got out of her head, really.

Shawn produced a magazine from somewhere and propped it open on her lap. He allowed her to take control of the page-turning as he circled his arms around her waist, hugging her as he rested his chin on her shoulder to follow along on the page.

Sometime later, a loud yell caused the pair to simultaneously look up from their reading. Juliet heard the boy mutter a quiet "oops" behind her before he slid his arms from her waist to rest his hands over her ears as he raised his voice: "oh yeah! Hey, the super told me to tell you that the people above us let their bathtub overflow and whatever you do, don't—"

He trailed off and dropped his hands as a soaked Jack made an appearance, looking very unhappy. "Don't poke the big bubble on my ceiling?" he asked. He shot the redhead an irritated look as she giggled at his state.

"Yeah, you got the message?" Shawn questioned him.

"Yeah, just now. My whole room's flooded and there's half a bathtub hanging over my head."

"I guess you're feeling a bit drained right now, huh?" Juliet remarked.

Behind her, Shawn chuckled. "That was terrible, Julie."

"I think you mean tear-able."

"That was one too many."

🌎🌎🌎

The redhead followed the Hunter brothers as they entered Shawn's room. As soon as she saw it, though, a hand came up to cover her mouth as it opened wide with shock. Trying to hide her grimace of disgust, she turned to her boyfriend. "You live like this?"

"Are you calling me a pig?"

"If I was, I'd say it, you pig," the girl retorted. "Have you not grown up at all?"

"Please," Jack scoffed. "A pig would never live here."

"For your information, I am grown up. And yes, a pig does live here." The boy pulled back a curtain to reveal said animal.

Juliet gave him a disgusted look. "If we ever have a house together I'm never putting you in charge of hygiene."

Shawn stared at her as a dreamy expression appeared on his face. "We're going to have a house together?"

The redhead crossed her arms. "That's all you got out of that sentence?"

"I'm sleeping on the couch, man," Jack interrupted them. He gave the couple a grossed-out look (after all, it was his younger brother acting all dopey.)

Before anyone could reply, though, Cory rushed up to them. "Guys, I need to sleep on your couch."

"What happened?"

"I got into a fight with my dad."

"Everybody gets into a fight with their dad," Jack told him.

"Yeah, I knocked him down."

"Cory," Juliet said reproachfully, causing the curly-haired boy to shoot her a look.

"I didn't do it on purpose!" Jack sighed and left the trio as Cory continued: "I wanted to play basketball with him like he does with Eric."

"I can't believe you hit your dad," Shawn said. "Now does he have to leave the house in shame? Do you get his woman?"

"Shawn," the redhead added in the same tone. She poked him in the side, causing the boy to flinch away from her finger.

"Well, I didn't actually hit him. I shoved him and he went down," Cory explained. "He does all these things with Eric. Why won't he do things with me?"

"Well, he's afraid you're gonna hit him again."

Juliet swatted her boyfriend on the arm. "You're not helping," she scolded him before she addressed Cory: "Cor, maybe you should just ask him to do stuff with you. Maybe he doesn't realize you want to do more than talk."

"I already tried that," he replied. "That's how we got in this situation. Eric has a good relationship with him, you know that." The two boys sat down on whatever they could find while Juliet opted to stand, as she figured that was the safer option. "They ski together. They go camping together. I even heard them planning on jumping out of a plane together. All we do is talk."

"Cory, you have a great relationship with your dad," Shawn said.

"I'm not gonna go through the rest of my life as they guy my father talked to. You know? Great conversations are not memories you look back on."

"Yeah you can," the redhead put in. "I remember a lot of the conversations we have."

"Great conversations are not memories I want to look back on," Cory amended his statement.

"You have tons of memories with your dad."

"Like what?"

"Like the time you beat him up," the dark-haired boy said, earning a smack on the back of his head from his girlfriend. "You're gonna talk about that for years."

🌎🌎🌎

The next day, Juliet sat with a tired Shawn in the library. The dark-haired boy was sitting next to her in one of the chairs with his seat pulled as close to hers as possible. He leaned over the armrests and put his head on her shoulder to take a nap as she worked to make up for his lost night of sleep.

"Why are you so tired?" she asked, faintly amused by his. . . well, clinginess. It turned out the more tire he was, the clingier he became as one of his arms slid through the gap between the arm rest and chair seat to wrap around her waist so he wouldn't impede her progress.

"Jack's a lunatic," was his mumbled reply.

Shaking her head with fond exasperation, she turned slightly to press a kiss to his hair before she returned to focusing on her much-less-appealing math problems. Thankfully, his tiredness also prevented him from distracting her and she was able to get some work done before he spoke again: "gimme a kiss."

"I just did," the redhead said patiently as she worked out the twentieth problem on her scrap paper.

"Forty minutes ago," he complained. He sat up properly for the first time to pout at her. "That's too long."

"That's nothing," she countered. "Besides, it was more like ten minutes ago."

"No it wasn't."

"Let me finish this question and you can ask again in three to five business days," Juliet replied. She hid her smile as she more-carefully-than-necessary wrote the number four. Glancing out of the corner of her eye, she watched Shawn's face fall and ducked her head as she finished copying her answer. She placed her pencil down and leaned over to press her lips softly to his. "There, happy now?"

He visibly brightened. "I thought you'd make me wait twenty minutes."

"We both know you have the patience of a goldfish."

"I'm only gonna agree 'cause you said it."

Giving the boy a fond look, she turned back to her homework. "Now I really gotta finish this since it's due later this week."

Now that he'd rested, though, he was intent on distracting the redhead. Leaning closer to her, he pressed the side of his face against hers as he studied the numbers she'd written on her paper. "You have such nice handwriting, Julie."

"Thanks," came the short reply in a fruitless effort to shut down his efforts before they started.

Rolling his eyes at the weak attempt, Shawn raised his hand to gently cup the girl's cheek. His breath brushed against her face as he murmured, "Julie."

Sighing, she started to ask, "what—" in a half-irritated tone only to cut off abruptly as he turned her head to face him. Her breath hitched in her throat at how close they were and she was instantly mesmerized by the color of his eyes, the bright blue making her feel like she'd just sunk into a clear ocean waters.

She forced her gaze away from his only for her eyes to flick down to his lips and watched as his tongue darted out to lick them. Her pencil clattered to the table as her grip on it loosened but the noise went unheard by the couple, too caught up in their own world to register anything else around them.

Juliet wasn't sure who leaned closer to who but she could feel that the distance had been closed as Shawn's lips brushed against hers, causing her heart pick up speed and hammer rapidly in her chest. She moved closer to fully press her lips against his. As the kiss continued, her normally sharp mind spun as a wave of delightful dizziness consumed her as it always did when they kissed. When they pulled away, Shawn's voice was breathless as he suggested, "maybe you could do your homework later?"

🌎🌎🌎

Daly made it a point not to mention her daughter's freshly-kissed appearance as the couple entered the diner. Instead, she politely offered them a table and went to the back with their orders while she smiled secretly to herself.

Unaware of her mother's knowledge, the redhead leaned against the dark-haired boy. He looped an arm around her shoulders and stretched his legs out underneath the table to relax in the booth. Juliet tucked her feet up on the bench and reached for the boy's other hand to tangle their fingers together before she proposed their topic of conversation: "so, what about this: if you were stuck on a desert island with no supplies except for one box which could contain anything you wanted, what would it be?"

"Going with an icebreaker, Julie?" the boy asked with a grin, causing the girl to roll her eyes.

"I think your answer could say a lot about who you are as a person. Do you want me to go first?"

"Wouldn't that help with my answer?"

"Maybe," she said with a shrug. "Or you could come up with your answer and I could come up with mine, and then you wouldn't change when I told you. Or you could go first."

He looked thoughtful. "The box could have anything? Even a person?"

"Yeah, I guess. I dunno how ethical that would be though."

"The box would probably adjust to whatever's inside of it," Shawn replied.

"Sure," Juliet agreed, "since it's a metaphorical box. Why don't we think about it for a minute?"

They fell into silence to consider their answer. The redhead's first idea wasn't logical at all: the only thing (person) that came to mind was Shawn. She wasn't sure how helpful he'd be in getting off a desert island, though, so she reluctantly moved on. She also supposed that the geography of the island would be important, too, depending on how long it took her to get off it.

"You still thinking?"

The redhead tilted her head to look up at him, surprised. "You're done?"

"Yep." 

"I need another minute, hold on."

The lapsed into silence until she spoke again: "alright, I got it ."

Before he could respond, Daly returned with their orders: a tuna melt for her daughter and a burger for the dark-haired boy. Once she'd placed the items down with the necessary condiments, she gave the couple a smile before she moved to another table.

As Juliet picked up half of her sandwich, she continued: "a fully charged SAT phone so I can call someone to get me off the island."

"That's very logical of you," Shawn remarked after he took a bite of his meal. "I expected nothing less."

She frowned. "You make it sound like a bad thing."

"It's not," he reassured her. "You're brilliant so that's exactly the answer I expected."

"Okay, what did you answer then?"

"You."

The redhead gave him a confused look. "What do you mean?"

"You'd be in the box," the boy repeated. "You're my item."

"Oh," the redhead murmured as her cheeks turned a light shade of pink. She tried to sound reproachful. "That's not very practical at all."

"Yes it is," he countered. "I trust you, Julie." I love you. "I always have." I always have. "If anyone could get us off the island, it would be you."

To her surprise, she felt the prickle of tears at the back of her eyes and she blinked them away rapidly before looking up at him, "I trust you too, Shawnie. You know that, right?"

Smiling softly at her, he reached up to tuck a strand of red hair that had fallen in front of her face behind her ear. His fingers brushed against her cheek and her face warmed even more as he did so, "I know that."

Her mouth parted slightly as she met his eyes which looked at her with such fondness, fascination and admiration all at once that she almost forgot how to breathe. He leaned closer to kiss her and as they pulled away, his expression remained the same. "How many times is that now?"

The redhead giggled slightly. "I think I've lost count." 










A/n: slight disclaimer: I 100% borrowed "the box question" from the Agents of Shield episode The Only Light in the Darkness. It was probably one of my favorite scenes from the show :) 

[written may 2021]
[edited jun. 2022]